abjad

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A writing system, similar to a syllabary, in which there is one glyph (that is a symbol or letter) for each consonant or consonantal phoneme. Some languages that use abjads are Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu. Abjads differ from syllabaries (such as the Japanese hiragana) in that the vowel quality of each letter is left unspecified, and must be inferred from context and grammar.

Etymologies

Coined by Peter T. Daniels from the first four letters of the Arabic alphabet, a-b-j-d: أبجد (ʔábjad). Compare Greek α,β,γ,δ... (Wiktionary)

Examples

Arabic uses a writing system that we haven't seen yet: an abjad, which is basically an alphabet that doesn't have any vowels-the reader must supply them.

Formed from the first three letters of the Arabic one, this is a system of writing which includes only consonants. In the Semitic languages the abjad is fundamentally entwined with the novel grammar: the consonants in a word indicate its meaning, whilst the vowels (along with pre- or postfixes) indicate its form).